A Note on Romance

FROM where he lay he could see, at the end of a gray, cobble-stoned alley, a vivid little picture in a compact frame of buildings — the bright blank of the wide, asphalted Prado, bounded on the farther side by the low iron rail of the sea-wall, sharp against the flat, staring, blue harbor; and beyond, completing the miniature landscape, the white edge of a sun-baked, tropical shore. And all this lay breathlessly still, and queerly sabbatical in aspect, except when, at irregular intervals, there came a low, monstrous sound, shaking the air like a blast of wings — the drone of faraway cannon.

A slow, methodical trickle of plaster spilled and flared from the building opposite him, and woke him from the stupor into which he had fallen. He lay against one wall of the narrow alley, in a crumpled heap, a bulkyshouldered, hard-faced man of thirty, in the dirty garb of an insurrecto — stout boots, khaki trousers, stained and patched, a gray flannel shirt, and a wide sombrero; around his chest was a bandola of cartridges, by his side a carbine.

He looked up to see whence the plaster had come, for, in the intense stillness, the soft rattle of its fall was strangely startling. The building he gazed at formed a high, blank wall to the alley; above the second story it was a chaotic tangle of wreckage —shot to tottering ruins by some terrific bombardment.

He dropped his eyes, uninterested. At the present moment he felt no pain, only a lightness of head and a clarity of intellect, though a soft and insidious paralysis prevented all motion in his lower limbs, and a small hole was drilled clear through his flannel shirt just above where it was tucked into his trousers, and about it was a little crescent of brown stain.

The shade of the alley was grateful after the fierce hand-to-hand struggle out yonder on the blazing Prado, where he and his companion insurrectos, under cover of a bombardment from the revolted navy, had swept up the beach, in a fanatic attempt to carry the city, and had met and obliterated the loyalist army.

Resistance had been more stubborn than they had expected; in the mêlée a loyalist officer with a staring, frightened face, swerving in front of him, had shot him, so that he fell and lay prone till the loyalists broke and fled, and the whole rout swept on, leaving a deserted street sparsely scattered with dead men.

After a time he had revived, had succeeded in crawling into the alley out of the sun. He had seen enough of warfare to know that his wound was crippling but not fatal, and he was content to lie still, caring very little whether Guides and his hired band of adventurers, of which he was one, gained the city, so long as he was not in excruciating physical pain; for he was a brave man and a cynic, as his hard face and cruel, sensual lips showed.

It had been years since he had been silent for so long, with nothing to do but think; for he was no thinker, no student — as he had proved by a wild revolt from the severe and hampered training of a New England college, to a determined pursuit of adventure.

Ah, the glamour of those first days of romance — the smell of the cattleship in which he had gone abroad, the boulevards and cafés of Paris, Spain and the Moors, the Gold Coast of Africa, the diamond mines, the Veldts and the Cape; furtive rendezvous, glances of humid eyes, touches of hands and lips, passionate stolen nights, fierce and bloody duels, hair-breadth escapes, all things torrid and romantic, seen with sentimental eyes, with the rosy glow of fiction over them all!

Then, the glamour waning and thinning, and the hard, ugly foundations, and the cruel and shameful retrospects, on which such a life is built, showing through, he turned to the last resort of the adventure-drugged man — war: regular war, organized war; irregular war, guerilla-war; war no casuist could have distinguished from murder. A soldier of fortune in impossible causes, in desperate, dishonorable battles, in brief dangers, in briefer glories, — so went eight years of feverish living, — and here he was, like a rat in a hole, in an alley of pretentious, unimportant South American Aguas Calientes, for whose ‘liberation’ he had been fighting, along with a ‘gallant handful’ of mercenaries. And though he had no intention of dying, he realized, with a certain acute hatred, directed bitterly at mankind as a whole, that no one would care if he did.

Again the air vibrated unpleasantly. Another cascade of plaster slid deliberately from the ruined dwelling above him, striking him and rousing him sharply from his coma of thought.

At that moment he heard a queer little noise, which at first he could neither define nor locate. He turned his head idly and looked up the alley where the houses closed together and made of the passage a dusky cul-de-sac. In the dark wall there was a low servant’s door, for these were dwellinghouses of the very rich on the Prado — and, as he looked, he saw a movement in this small black hole, and a little figure emerged and came slowly into the alley.

It was a very small girl, perhaps six or seven years of age. She was dressed neatly but richly in a stiff red dress which came to her knees, and under which her slim little legs moved in their tight black stockings.

She came down the alley, walking slowly, waveringly, blunderingly, and making the queer, low wail which had at first attracted his attention. On her face was an expression half of pain, half of petulant bewilderment — as though she were exhausted and annoyed by wandering a long while over a silent house, in search of the nurse or parent who ordinarily at this time did for her accustomed service, and who was now either absent, or in a strange inexplicable attitude of calm indifference and silence.

He noted idly — for little children were nothing to him — that her face lighted up when she saw him; and she stopped her hurt, angry little wail and came straight toward him. She held one arm rigidly in front of her chest and clasped its wrist firmly with the other hand. She came to him where he crouched, and displayed the cause of her grief as if it were something he could remedy, her demand for relief completely imperious, as a child’s often is — holding up to him her right hand, with the little finger cleanly shot away, and nothing left but a clotted, scarlet horror.

The ravages of battlefields and the savagery of murders he had often seen; he was hardened and calloused by blood and death; but in some manner this childish helplessness and trust stirred him. He raised himself against the wall, put out a powder-scarred hand, and drew the child toward him. The canteen at his side was full of water, and, fastened within his shirt, he found intact the small emergency packet of bandages which guerilla campaigns, with a hospital tent an undreamed-of luxury, had taught him to carry.

So, holding the child tightly against him, he washed and dressed the wound. She gave but one sharp cry when he touched it, then was silent, pressing against him and breathing convulsively. As he worked roughly, binding up this child’s wound as he would have repaired the damage to one of his horses, or one of his weapons, doing a crude but effective task with no sympathy and no consideration, a strange thought came slowly and adventitiously into his mind. In retrospect this life of his was useless; not only useless — but it had a paucity which he had never before realized. He had pursued this life madly, because it had beckoned with vistas of glowing color opening out radiantly, with strange, wild harmonies of fantastic novelties; and now it appeared very dust and ashes. He did not even possess the serenely-flowing happiness of the secure and sane life against which he had so desperately revolted. That was one lack, but not the ultimate lack. Also he was poor; but riches could not buy what he desired. He was homeless; but a sumptuous house could be barren and disconsolate. He was a man who had known many women, and was wifeless; had begotten children, and was childless. The glow had faded away from life, leaving it tawdry and garish; and, looking at this child he was succoring, for the first time he realized fully that he held at his side a human entity, a sentient being, a bit of passion and pain, like himself.

He had never before been in so intimate a contact with a child. Her delicate head of short, black hair was thrown back against the red shoulder of her dress. He noticed the pure curve of the uplifted little throat, and the tiny blue shadows that lay tenderly under the brown chin. Her narrow lips were smooth as a textile of some fairy loom, and the scarlet, color lay evenly along them, exactly defined from the creamy olive of her skin: a thing so pure, so perfect, so matchlessly perfect, he had never seen. But it was her eyes finally that he noticed: dusky, black-brown deeps, with thick fringes of soft, smudgy eyelash, and eyebrows above like single strokes of a wide brush; in them, as they stared, fully open and unseeing, at the sky, was — pain. He realized abruptly that he was hurting her, and the knowledge unnerved him. His fingers shook a little and he hurried his bandaging; he made an effort — new to him — to be tender. A sudden impulse to speak to her came over him; he did not know why he restrained it. Nor would he have known what to say.

When the rough dressing was completed, he found that he had retained the brown hand he had bandaged: little, exquisite piece of human clay, so featly and wonderfully fashioned, so fine and flawless, except for the irreparable damage the afternoon’s ‘glory’ had wrought upon it. He caught his breath sharply.

Again the air trembled with the muffled beat of cannon; and far off a faint, fierce shout capped the low thunder, like an exulting cry at a good shot. He raised himself a little, and, turning, looked eagerly down the alley at the bright, tantalus-picture of street and sea, white land, blue water, luminous sunshine.

War, Romance, Adventure, Glory, Passion, Excitement—all those fair and seductive things which had beckoned to his boyhood, captured his youth, wrecked his manhood — futile things; not only futile but disastrous; not only disastrous but horrible. Wounded children, murdered women, pillage, fire, rapine, confusion, chaos — all these followed in the train of the life he had chosen and pursued, hard, appalling verities, in spite of civilization and the boasted progress of mankind. And this maimed child, innocent and virginal —

The child had fallen back against his breast. Wearied with pain and loss of blood, she slept serenely, her small face calm and placid. The faint, warm perfume of her, the elastic fragility of her, the touch of her stiffly-laundered red dress, her evenly-drawn breath which moved her gently against him, made him think of her oddly as some quaint, fragrant flower.

He put an arm lightly about her, and the little breast rose and fell against it rhythmically. He looked down at her. He had never had a child of his own. The thought came over him, grew upon him, choked him, overwhelmed him. He had never had a child of his own.

The little, flower-like creature sighed and stirred fretfully, and let her head fall back loosely upon his shoulder. Her unmaimed hand, traveling in sleep, crept down his sleeve, found his hand, and slid into it, where it lay content.

He gave a great gasp, flung both arms around the little body, drew it to him with infinite tenderness, and laid his lips against the nape of the slim, brown neck.